York Art Gallery: A Walking Tour
Words by Cara Lee
As another lockdown sets into the country, arts venues nationwide are once again having to close. Luckily I was able to visit the York Art Gallery last weekend, and I thought as museums and galleries are once again turning online I’d use my visit to provide a walking tour of the gallery, from wherever you are.
The range of works on display at York Art Gallery is vast, varying from Dutch Masters in The Burton Gallery, to Human Nature, a temporary exhibition showcasing the works of three digital artists and collectives. With the Gallery’s social distancing measures, Human Nature is the first exhibition to visit. Part of York Mediale 2020, Human Nature displays work from Kelly Richardson, Rachel Goodyear and Marshmallow Laser Feast, and their pieces work together to crescendo into a summary of humanity. One focuses on the interior psyche, one on the literal interior, presenting the body as an ecosystem, and one looks at the impact humans have had on nature.
The Tides Within Us Photo by Charlotte Graham
Although not the largest exhibition, it’s worth a visit. It is unusual for York at the very least; York Mediale has only been running since 2018, but such a grand scale of digital and interactive events is something the city hadn’t seen prior to the festival. With another lockdown, plans have been halted and exhibitions postponed: one of the installations, People We Love, opened in the Minster on 2nd November, but with lockdown beginning on 5th November, the Minster is temporarily closed. Hopefully the festival will be extended more widely; Human Nature, for instance, has already been extended from ending in January next year, to May.
Harland Miller Photo by Cara Lee
The Gallery then opens up into the permanent collections. The Burton Gallery consists of Italian and Dutch Old masters, mixed with contemporary works such as those by Harland Miller. Seeing some of Miller’s pieces was lovely, as due to the pandemic, I didn’t get to see the York, So Good They Named It Once exhibition displaying his infamous Penguin Book Covers, running earlier this year.
CoCA photo by Cara Lee
Moving onwards is the Centre of Ceramic Art, documenting an extensive showcase of Gillian Lowndes and Anthony Shaw’s work. The CoCA illustrates the importance of the ceramics movement in British art, and its archives are informative about the changing nature and use of ceramics through history. Set in beautiful glass cases with soft lights, the displays focus on the personalities of the maker, and of the ceramic itself.
Finally is the Aesthetica Art Prize, concentrating on 18 shortlisted artists for the annual prize. I went to the Gallery looking for some escapism, but the works in this exhibition, whilst striking and unique, definitely did not offer the distraction I went for. Each piece is a discussion of the world, its digitisation, flaws, and how it is a fluid, constantly changing. Several of the pieces focus heavily on digital art; walking into the room, a cacophony of voices greets you, speaking into a densely quiet room. The voices – some familiar, some not – issue from a multitude of screens.
Project Fear Photo by Cara Lee
The eye first rests on a triptych of colourful boards by Christiane Zschommler entitled Project Fear. The works are photographic prints and sound collages which redact the text of studies about Brexit’s impact, in order to reflect the misinformation that was present and pertinent in the time of the referendum. Politics is also at play in Bill Posters and Daniel Howe’s Big Dada. The three-minute-long video manipulates the words of figures such as Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump, showing the prevalence and ease of creating fake news in our lives. In her drawling voice, ‘Kim’ for instance states, “I feel really blessed because I genuinely love the process of manipulating people online for money”.
Murmurations Photo by Cara Lee
Although the Aesthetica Art Prize has been running for 13 years, this is the first exhibition of the shortlist that I’ve seen. Its relevance was somewhat scary; contemporary art often incorporates politics and the wider world, but in an already turbulent time, with the US elections upcoming, climate change increasingly becoming an issue, it becomes worryingly mirrorlike. One of my favourite pieces was Stephanie Potter Corwin’s Murmurations, displaying 10,000 selfies from a particular pink wall in Los Angeles. Looking closely, you can see each individual, but as a whole it exemplifies the pervasiveness of social media, examining how a trend becomes a trend. It asks how we function, as humans and individuals, in this age of technology.
The York Art Gallery exhibits work in all media, and from all eras. When it reopens, I would highly recommend a visit, and if you’re able to make a donation for its future, do so: the arts are incredibly important and incredibly at-risk, this winter more than any. The Gallery plans to reopen in early December, lockdown permitting.
